It's not the years it's the mileage: Dragon Age Origins (PC)

DA:Origins is an awesome sandwich where the bread is the awesome and a zeppelin of hot air is the meat. Of the 80 hours played the first 10 and the last 10 were the best parts, with tedious and endless side quests filling out the middle 60.

I chose the Dalish Elf origin and my story began in the Elvin Alienage. A fascinating portrayal of race in this high fantasy story, elves rate barely above slaves and the road out of the Alienage was a hard one. Arranged marriage, attempted rape and violent death followed me as I was taken to become a fame Grey Warden. The last best hope against a civilization-destroying blight that occurs every millennia or so, I became a warden in time to watch the king suffer betrayal and the land fall into war.

Walk Hard



Unleashed upon the world I set about completing quests and collecting party members. For 40 hours. The game does an abysmal job of directing the player towards story quests. While agency is vital and some interesting side stories emerged from the journey this lack of direction impacted the forward momentum of the plot. With no real tangible reason to move forward, I meandered, and was often randomly slaughtered for my actions. More than once I entered a literal dungeon only to find I could not move forward. Either I was undersupplied, had the wrong party members or wasn't leveled up enough but I had no way other than trial and error to discover which solution applied.

Tactically tactile

 The tactical camera became my default view, as it revealed large chunks of the map. I micromanaged encounters in fits and starts because I could not get the tactics menu to work the way I wanted. I wanted to teach the game to play each character as I would play them and I couldn't. It quickly became a tedious labor and I put off playing DA:O for months at a time.



It also became apparent I picked the entirely wrong class as a ranger and would have had more fun either as a mage or a warrior. Once Morrigan joined the party, I used her rather than my own character to direct battles.

Love and other drugs

I will sheepishly admit I was unwilling to attempt trial and error in the gift giving to my companions and used a guide. Unfortunately the guide also revealed a plot point to me and so much so that in the actual encounter I was shocked by the outcome I received.

Wooing companions led me down the trap of wanting everything, so I had 3 love interests maxed by the time the last act began. I actively avoided talking to any of the characters as the game would prompt me to make a decision. This need to play the field as along as possible left me with the worst of all outcomes: Not one did I bang. Only going to back to an earlier save allowed me to experience the god-awful dead-eyed mannequin sex.

I found the conversations to have a sweetness to them, but the animations are so horribly cycled and stiff I never connected to what should have been the emotional core of the story. Contrast this to being moved to tears by the eventual resolution of my ME 2 FemShep and her lady love.

The path much chosen

Few decisions made early in the game affect the end, but the last act is overflowing with plot branching. So many decisions are thrown at the player so fast, the last ten hours becomes a train barreling towards its destination.

Thrones are contested, battles fought, hearts won, and betrayals fester. In a surprising and far too late moment, the player’s entire contingent is split in two. As the primary, my character led her band to face the archdemon while the rest remained behind to hold the city gates. The game splits the perspective for a too-brief time, allowing back to back missions before the final boss fight. A delightful surprise, more opportunity to use varied teams would have been much appreciated.


At completion my character had leveled far past what the intent for the end game appeared to be as I cut through ground forces like butter. Even the protracted battle against the Archdemon came down to attrition with no real chance of losing any of my team, much less dying outright.





Perhaps most satisfying was the amiable and charming epilogue, where I accepted the role of hero and gained closure of sorts with my various party members (except my dog, who omission was felt deeply). Meandering from character to character was precisely the kind of denouement that is missing from most games.

DA:O suffers from the same core distraction as Fallout:New Vegas, a surfeit of content. Without a hand to prod the player towards an end goal, a game can peter out mid-story, leaving the player exhausted and rushing through the end.